Tarun Bhattacharya

Tarun Bhattacharya earned the designation “master of 100 strings” for his transformative approach to the santoor, the hammered dulcimer indigenous to India. He has broadened the instrument’s expressive range by installing an additional string whose tension responds to fingertip pressure and by integrating meend, the fluid gliding ornamentation previously foreign to santoor technique. Bhattacharya became the first santoor exponent invited to perform on the nationally broadcast program Raag Rang. His initial training came from his father, Shri Robi Bhattacharya, a performer on both sitar and santoor; although he began with tabla, he turned to the santoor at the age of eight. Subsequent tutelage under Dulal Roy led to thirteen years of study with Ravi Shankar.

While Bhattacharya’s primary focus remains solo performance and recording, he has joined forces at intervals with fellow Shankar disciples, guitarist V.M. Bhatt and flutist Ronu Majumdar, to create the album The Song of Nature. He also issued the duo recording Mental Bliss with tabla artist Bikom Ghosh, drawing on Sri Aurobindo’s ideas of higher evolution. Throughout the twenty-first century he has produced dozens of albums that situate the santoor within both classical and contemporary Indian idioms, documenting both technical mastery and the instrument’s ongoing development. In addition to conducting workshops and retreats that reflect his view of music as a spiritual discipline, he maintains active involvement in humanitarian initiatives. His discography now exceeds 150 albums; in 2017 he released Exotic Santoor together with tabla master Sabir Khan.